


Could—I do more—for Thee

by middlemarch



Category: Little Women Series - Louisa May Alcott
Genre: Anger, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Marriage, Romance, Sisters, Vignette, post-canon for Little Women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 12:15:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14748680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: She married a philosopher. But that was not all he was.





	Could—I do more—for Thee

“She burnt thy book?” Friedrich exclaimed, aghast as Jo had never heard him before. They lay together in the wide bed, the moonlight draped over them like a second coverlet, his bare chest warm against her cheek. Her night plait had come loose again and her tangled hair covered her shoulders in place of the nightdress that had been cast upon the floor.

“Yes, that’s what I just said,” Jo replied. 

It seemed so long ago now, so very long ago. A world where Beth was always about, chasing after a kitten, drumming her fingers against any polished board wishing for a piano. Where her heart’s desire was her garret, a basket of apples, and an inkwell freshly filled, where tales of adventure and derring-do spilled forth as readily as the milk from Emil’s cup at every dinner. Friedrich had entreated her to tell him about her girlhood as he so often did and for whatever reason, she had decided to tell him the story of her lost book.

“Gott in Himmel! Thy work was not lost—it was destroyed! And by thy own sister,” he said, the words resonant. His hands held her more closely and Jo could not help her sybaritic sigh in response and the rallying of her spirit to hear his indignation.

“Could it have been an error? A grave one, but a child’s misapprehension?” he asked. Jo shifted and propped herself up on one elbow to regard her husband. She would never admit it, but she found him quite the handsomest man of her acquaintance-- his dark eyes and his darker beard, slowly turning silver, the strength of his shoulders and the almost delicate plane of his cheekbones all held an irresistible appeal. His countenance was invariably calm, so to see the anger lighting his eyes and tightening his lips was a shock on par with a lightning bolt and it thrilled her in the same way.

“No, she burned it deliberately. She knew what it meant to me,” Jo said. There was an echo of the agony it had caused her, more so for the girl she had been than for the lost manuscript, which she knew had had all the flaws of the writer’s first novel, as well as all the splotches and blots she was still prone to.

“What wickedness! However did thy mother punish her for such a sin?” Friedrich said, certain as she had once been that Marmee must mete out justice fairly.

“She was sent to bed after she apologized,” Jo said. A number of wintry days had passed before Amy fell through the rotting ice, but Jo couldn’t remember a moment of any of them.

“That was all?” 

“Yes. My parents never held with physical discipline and mercy was the order of the day, not vengeance,” Jo said.

“Mercy yes, but restitution, what of that?” Friedrich said.

“I don’t suppose Marmee could imagine any way for Amy to make it up to me. She counted on Amy’s own conscience to punish her. And then, a few days later, Amy nearly drowned in a half-frozen pond while Teddy and I were skating and my book suddenly was not so important,” Jo mused.

“And thou, how didst thee cope, with such a loss?” her husband said. He had not argued with what she said but he hadn’t accepted it either, just as part of her own soul had never agreed to leaven the loss with gratitude.

“I was angry, so angry, and bereft, and then I was faced with what it would have meant to lose a sister,” Jo said, recalling how the grief had settled in her after Amy’s brush with death, not dissipated as Marmee had hoped, but manageable, a weight she could carry.

“Thou suffered, liebe Josephine, greatly and with cause,” Friedrich declared and to hear it said, without any exculpation of Amy’s actions, finally lightened the burden she carried enough. She felt the tears in her eyes and then his hand, very gentle, on her cheek where they fell.

“Come thou unto me, meine Perle, let me comfort thee,” he said more quietly, kissing first her fingertips which were ever stained with ink, then her palms and wrists where her pulse beat. And then her lips, softly but intently. Without any indication that he would stop before dawn, a consolation she could never have imagined as Jo March and could not do without as Josephine Bhaer.

**Author's Note:**

> After watching the 2018 BBC Little Women, I am once again furious with Amy about Jo's book and so was at least one other person on Tumblr, especially over Marmee's lack of response to Amy's behavior. So, I decided someone would be angry as hell for me and Fritz just stepped right up. The title is from Emily Dickinson.


End file.
